Review: InFocus IN76
The propaganda
Last year, InFocus revealed its new range of home cinema projectors - the first in quite a long time. InFocus had always enjoyed a great reputation in the video projection market, but suffered slightly in the style department. Until now.
As you can see from the pic, the IN76 replaces the old clunky design and bland colours with a high-gloss, black finish and enough smooth, flowing curves to make a sports car jealous.
The specifications are of an equally high standard too: despite being one of the most reasonably priced HD Ready DLP projectors, it offers a contrast ratio of 3000:1, 1000 ANSI lumens, native 1280 x 720 resolution and a wealth of connectivity options via the unique 'M1-DA' port, as well as HDMI and component inputs.
The good
The projector's on screen menus are accessible using a smart, back-lit remote and we were happy to find that even a less technically minded user shouldn't have any trouble getting to grips with initial setup. More adventurous users will also be delighted with the sheer number of adjustable options to play with. These range from gamma presets to white peaking adjustment, overscanning, fleshtone correction, noise reduction and colour space/temperature correction to gain and offset tweaks for the red, green and blue image components.
There's quite a lot to get your head around, so fortunately the IN76 has three User Preset memory slots so you can easily experiment with different settings without causing something irreversible.
The image quality is a real triumph of the InFocus IN76. We already had very high expectations from the fact that it is an HD Ready DLP, but were still awed by what the projector produces. There are two outstanding factors: noise and black levels.
Digital noise is about as negligible as we've ever seen, with barely a hint of grain, dot crawl, edge haloes or jaggedness, or moiring - even traditional DLP issues, such as rainbowing, have been pretty much eliminated. You can still find some evidence of them with careful watching, but this is unlikely to affect your normal viewing experience. This is mostly thanks to the excellent Pixelworks DNX, which we tested by upscaling a standard definition Sky Digital signal fed through the S-Video port, and a good design that yields a simple optical arrangement.
Meanwhile, black levels are not only deeper than you'll find on any similarly priced alternative, but they come packed full of outstanding shadow detail and subtle greyscale that does wonders for adding realism to movies. When testing the IN76, we constantly found ourselves thinking of it in terms of far more expensive DLP projectors, and the not the lower budget models that the IN76's generous price tag pits it against.
The bad
The only complaint you can really have with the IN76 is if you were actually shopping for something more expensive. Forking out an extra grand or two will get you a projector with deeper blacks and even less of the already minimal rainbowing noise. You might even find something that looks better. In the end though, you'll be paying a lot more for something that won't offer a significant leap in performance.
However, just to prove that even the IN76 isn't infallible, we discovered that when upscaling some lower quality standard definition sources, you can suffer from some rather soft colours. This does leave skin tones looking a little pallid, but luckily this is a problem that only emerges occasionally.
Geek Sheet
DLP chip
Panel shape: 16:9
Resolution: 1280x720
HD Ready (will even take 1080p)
Contrast ratio: 3000:1
Brightness: 1000 ANSI Lumens
Throw ratio: 1.52-1.92 (distance/width)
Dimensions: 360(w) x 360(d) x 120(h)mm, weight: 4.5kg
Pixelworks 10-bit scaling
Multi-angle table mount
Overview
You can pick up an InFocus IN76 for less than £1,400 if you shop around and, even a year since its original announcement, it is still a real bargain. Its stylish design is matched only by the sheer quality of the images it produces and should be a serious consideration for anyone upgrading an existing projector or looking to add DLP technology to their home cinema system for the first time.
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Related sites: InFocus
